


Let and Let

by jazzfic



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They opened the cell doors. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let and Let

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Short and Sweet ficathon, for the prompt Johanna/Peeta _let me be your medicine_.

They opened the cell doors. And maybe it was another angle, a small sharp twist to their method of observation; they'd seen one react to the other with a wall in between, and were curious as to what might happen if that barrier were taken away. Maybe, but who knew. She didn't. She preferred it that way.

Her bare feet, louder to his ears than if she were wearing heavy boots. When he turned to face her she saw that they'd singed his brows, that the mark extended past his hairline, and she made a fist at the small of her back.

"Come on, then," he said. He stayed prone on his back, no attempt to sit up. The only threat came in those short three syllables, and even then she didn't believe it.

Johanna sat. She was clothed from head to toe. A smile made its way past her eyes. Not enough skin; probably why he didn't know her. That, and the rest.

She wriggled until she was lying alongside him. She kept her eyes on the small crease that formed above his nose, wondering what she looked like to him, and said, "I'm sorry this happened to you."

Time had put its own barriers between Johanna and everyone around her—one of those being that nobody could really pick out her truth from the lies anymore. Finnick, maybe. But he was much the same, so she figured they sort of counted each other out. Peeta, though, he was a great, unsteady weight on a terribly lopsided scale that she was pretty sure all the hope in the world couldn't touch. She'd heard his voice, that one name she was careful not to let slip as long as they were within striking distance. Not here, with his eyes all over her and his knee knocking hers. Johanna parted her lips. "I'm not here to help," she told him.

"Good. I don't want it."

She laughed. She yanked the pillow from beneath his head, twisted her body over him, a hand on either side of his head. "Wow, you're fast. Fast reaction, fast decision." He scowled up at her. "Bet they love that."

"I don't know. I don't stop to ask." He considered her. "You do, though."

The grin left her lips. It leapt to his instead, but briefly, because then she was kissing the crease away, down the straight plane of his nose, to his mouth. She wondered how many times he'd had words smothered with frustrated, lonely, intense affection. No, not affection. Need. Anger. Anger that very quickly changed in a fast intake of breath to—

 _Ugh, no_. She bit his tongue. It didn't help. He was still warm all over. She gave in to the trembling in her arms, letting them drop and letting him roll her in a single movement that shed the worn sheet from his lower body, exposing his prosthetic. She kissed his ears, his neck. She was hurting. She didn't want him hurt. She didn't _know_ him.

"Tell me," she said.

"I'm missing something, but I..." He was breathing hard, shaking against her. "I don't know what that is."

A click of a muzzle against her ear. Open the cell doors; and now they were closing them. Johanna kissed the corner of Peeta's mouth, the one place where the skin was still smooth, untouched, unmarked. She stepped off him and let herself be led away.

They were left alone the rest of that night, and the whole of the day after. Left alone, but they still cried out. With all she hadn't said, she knew she'd all but done their work for them.


End file.
